Breaking News: Football Manager 2018 Headline Features

[Michael Zorc]

I actually liked the video and the way it was done, especially the Mike Duff reference and Miles' drive-and-stop interview.

However, Miles acting was really bad (in a playful, funny kind of way - I think Miles is great 😀) and he gave away the info too easily but, still, it gave me a good laugh.

I was just happy to hear about new players roles and potential tactical improvements, as I mentioned before.

In terms of buying the game, I'll wait for the specific details of the tactical improvements to be released as I'm quite happy to miss the pre-order deadline and pay more for the game after getting greater certainty on the features that matter to me most. 

[Pompey1978]

Surely the video is entirely in keeping with the football world at the minute, with the inventive player unveilings and goal updates that we've seen clubs use over the summer and into the season? To me SI were just tapping into that general mood in a humorous and light-hearted way.

Football Manager is a game, when all's said and done - yes we take it seriously, yes we devote hundreds and thousands of hours to it, but it's still an entertainment form.

I'm quite sure the information re: new features will be forthcoming soon. In the meantime, if you didn't like the video, just pretend you haven't seen it and that there's been no announcement yet - after all, we can all imagine we're real football managers so it shouldn't be too much of a stretch

 

[HUNT3R]

People get carried away over absolutely nothing. Some will like the video; others won't. Within the hour, someone already posted a summary of what they saw and 2 hours after the video, the screens were posted of the features seen. All the info right here, in the same thread.

 

[2feet]

Attribute cards looks useful for a quick summary of a players best attributes.

But it should also show a players worst attributes.

Otherwise, if you only see the best ones, you might think 'oh mr x has great OFB and pace and good decisions, i'll play him as a winger' without realising mr x also has 5 for natural fitness and 6 for dribbling and 5 for crossing.

[saihtam]

Any toughts how breixit would be included? Will happen but still varies in degree?
All that happening in Spain came too late for being in game?

[westy8chimp]

Medical centre - seems a quick easy win for SI as a feature. The information was already presented to us on a player by player basis. It's nice aesthetically but fairly certain I will not get a tangible benefit from it...you have to be fairly simple minded not to know, by now, that a player just returning from a long lay off is a risk. If common sense is lacking it's presented to us via match fitness and condition already.

Dynamics - a lot of positive comments here but the hierarchy and social grouping looks incredibly arbitrary. Simply a combination of age, nationality time at club and personality.  The example they had already raises eyebrows... a trio of friends who are best mates because they are the same age and Greek; Zarate (30 Argentinian), Holebas (33 German born Greek), Karnezis (32 Greek). It's not inspiring ... and again seems a simple win, it was already there behind the scenes to calculate who would be unhappy when you try and sell one of your players (or ignore their demands). I'm not sure the actual interactions will change. i.e. "holebas wants more first team football" ... ignored... squad unhappy with treatment of Holebas... go to screen and it's just Karnezis and Zarate unhappy "if I play Holebas more then someone else is losing out" ... Zarate and Karnezis happy with that

I was intrigued by the yellow lines connecting players on the tactic screen.

If it is based on dynamics (time spent playing alongside a player... or good interaction between players) then it is good

If it is something we the manager have control of (a role-partnership tactical choice such as when one of you is covering the other should be stopping [rather than having to specify one defender is cover duty the other is stopper]) then it is an excellent addition

[forameuss]

41 minutes ago, saihtam said:

Any toughts how breixit would be included? Will happen but still varies in degree?
All that happening in Spain came too late for being in game?

As was said in another thread, the situation in Spain would be incredibly toxic, both politically and socially.  Even if it wasn't too late, do you really think it should be included?

EDIT: As for brexit, I'd imagine they'd keep it much the same as it is in FM17.  Don't think there's much more certainty as to which direction it'll go than there was this time last year.

Edited October 3, 2017 by forameuss

[Pompey1978]

33 minutes ago, forameuss said:

As was said in another thread, the situation in Spain would be incredibly toxic, both politically and socially.  Even if it wasn't too late, do you really think it should be included?

EDIT: As for brexit, I'd imagine they'd keep it much the same as it is in FM17.  Don't think there's much more certainty as to which direction it'll go than there was this time last year.

If anything I'd suggest the Brexit mechanics in FM18 need to include MORE possibilities... including how many years the whole damn process takes, or if it happens at all!

[Guest El Payaso]

47 minutes ago, westy8chimp said:

Dynamics - a lot of positive comments here but the hierarchy and social grouping looks incredibly arbitrary. Simply a combination of age, nationality time at club and personality.  The example they had already raises eyebrows... a trio of friends who are best mates because they are the same age and Greek; Zarate (30 Argentinian), Holebas (33 German born Greek), Karnezis (32 Greek). It's not inspiring ... and again seems a simple win, it was already there behind the scenes to calculate who would be unhappy when you try and sell one of your players (or ignore their demands). I'm not sure the actual interactions will change. i.e. "holebas wants more first team football" ... ignored... squad unhappy with treatment of Holebas... go to screen and it's just Karnezis and Zarate unhappy "if I play Holebas more then someone else is losing out" ... Zarate and Karnezis happy with that

I would see potential in dynamics as the game might now actually punish if you for example bring in 10 new signings during one window. This might shake the squad harmony and actually make the team underperform until you finally get sacked as you cannot turn the sledge. Yeah yeah, 'the game has always punished for signing too many players inside short time', well there might have been that kind of feature but it really hasn't been well represented as the only downside has seemed to be that the tactical familiarity drops and even that is not a disaster as the team will still perform well on the pitch.

[Svenc]

1 hour ago, El Payaso said:

I would see potential in dynamics as the game might now actually punish if you for example bring in 10 new signings during one window. This might shake the squad harmony and actually make the team underperform until you finally get sacked as you cannot turn the sledge. Yeah yeah, 'the game has always punished for signing too many players inside short time', well there might have been that kind of feature but it really hasn't been well represented as the only downside has seemed to be that the tactical familiarity drops and even that is not a disaster as the team will still perform well on the pitch.

Intriguing and promising thoughts! There's also players adapting, which seems to be always tweaked though. I'never been the player who would hugely upset squads, as clearly the feedback you got in the game was that would be not ideal for performance. However, for a couple reasons on one release I "stress tested" this by clearing the squad of certain sides of a league in the editor, going into the squad of another side and giving them all a contract for that side I had just cleared their squad list. The game would recognize them as a squad of players who'd never at all played together as could be seen by the assistant feedback. Whilst this was a bit extreme, and whilst this was AI management ( ) on full match details, I got squads such as Atletico's edited to Eibar underperform as low as mid-table or thereabouts, and that wasn't a one off. Don't know how big those penalties are in current iterations, though.

It's tough to compare this to football as that doesn't happen to such degrees. It's one of the things that must be fairly hard to model, as it's one of those things that are likely not as black and white and depend on a case by case thing, like how good the new players actually are / perform, for instance (in football, transfers fail pretty often). It may be one of those things where we would find "plausible stories" in retrospective, a fitting narrative that seems to explain a result, depending how that disrupted squad performed. You see this in football all the time, if a side wins, it oft doesn't matter how. A few lucky scrapes, the manager has it ieasier both in the media and everywhere. Hamburg tabloids cheerfully proclaiming TABELLENFÜHRER!!! after HSV had just won their second match in a row at the start of this season, where they basically scored 2 goals off their first two attempts and that was that. Last season Cologne, had a few so-so convincing wins at the start (the opposite of what they have now as they struggle for points even in matches they may have at least drawn), then almost won in Munich by being in their box like 3 times in 90 minutes and wereproclaimed to be Bayernjäger (Bayern hunters). It's not only tabloid media though. Our brains are wired like that, always looking for clear-cut reasons to fit an event. If Cologne would have bought a lot of new players (well they HAVE lost their most clinical goal scorer....)

I agree on that "punishment" front, and also that disrupting squad should be a real thing having decent effects -- there's got to be some kind of bad management in there outside of doing the blatantly obviously stupid.

Edited October 3, 2017 by Svenc

[westy8chimp]

32 minutes ago, El Payaso said:

I would see potential in dynamics as the game might now actually punish if you for example bring in 10 new signings during one window. This might shake the squad harmony and actually make the team underperform until you finally get sacked as you cannot turn the sledge. Yeah yeah, 'the game has always punished for signing too many players inside short time', well there might have been that kind of feature but it really hasn't been well represented as the only downside has seemed to be that the tactical familiarity drops and even that is not a disaster as the team will still perform well on the pitch.

But in reality you know this feature is going to behave within a set criteria of rules.

Other than the exception of a few players starting the game with favoured personnel at other clubs (say Pogba and Lukaku pre-signing) ... basically every new signing will go in the 'other' category.

Does that mean you will fail? All it says to me is they aren't best friends with anyone yet ... so if I transfer list one of the social group ... maybe im better off because my new 10 signings wont care?

Lets say I do keep 20 players together for a decade and it's a strong social group ... the benefits may just be a tiny boost to team coherence that goes into the ME calculator. Probably minimal and as you say, no different to the current 'under the hood' team gel that is already there.

 

[gunner86]

I'm interested to see whether dynamics is included in international management. I think this is where it could really come into it's own as a feature, as I'm not sure this exists at any level, inside the current international management module of the game

[Spurs08]

3 hours ago, saihtam said:

Any toughts how breixit would be included? Will happen but still varies in degree?
All that happening in Spain came too late for being in game?

The Spain/Catalonia stuff is not only too late, but likely too uncertain and too politically toxic. Even if Catalonia did become independent, there's no predicting how it will affect football: their teams could continue in La Liga, form an independent league, merge with the French league or even make a push for a European Super League. All of those potential changes mid-game would also be pretty difficult to program I expect.

1 hour ago, Pompey1978 said:

If anything I'd suggest the Brexit mechanics in FM18 need to include MORE possibilities... including how many years the whole damn process takes, or if it happens at all!

It's already possible for it to take a long time (up to ten years) or not happen at all, but the probabilities likely need to be adjusted given real-life developments such as May's support for a transitional period and the recent electoral success of the Labour Party.

[Guest El Payaso]

1 hour ago, Svenc said:

Intriguing and promising thoughts! There's also players adapting, which seems to be always tweaked though. I'never been the player who would hugely upset squads, as clearly the feedback you got in the game was that would be not ideal for performance. However, for a couple reasons on one release I "stress tested" this by clearing the squad of certain sides of a league in the editor, going into the squad of another side and giving them all a contract for that side I had just cleared their squad list. The game would recognize them as a squad of players who'd never at all played together as could be seen by the assistant feedback. Whilst this was a bit extreme, and whilst this was AI management ( ) on full match details, I got squads such as Atletico's edited to Eibar underperform as low as mid-table or thereabouts, and that wasn't a one off. Don't know how big those penalties are in current iterations, though.

That's fair enough and it's good to hear that at least those kind of extremes really make difference of some kind. But when you sign for example like 10 new players inside one transfer window, I have seen no real negative effect otherwise but tactical familiarity. And I think that many people have done it with more than players successfully and with it I mean continuing being successful without any real knock downs. With that much of player movement there should be the possibility that it takes even more than a full season to get the team gelled up if they ever will gel up and also inside this time one or two managers could be gone and one of those being the human player that made a mistake and tried to change too much and was punished for it. 

AI is of course always only AI. A good example of this was when I downloaded a db to season 17/18 for FM 2017 just to see both Valverde and Zidane being sacked way before Christmas and failing to keep their teams even inside top 7 in the La Liga and I doubt that their (or the players') attributes had been downgraded. So seeing AI underperform isn't anything too unfamiliar.

[Svenc]

5 minutes ago, El Payaso said:

That's fair enough and it's good to hear that at least those kind of extremes really make difference of some kind. But when you sign for example like 10 new players inside one transfer window, I have seen no real negative effect otherwise but tactical familiarity. And I think that many people have done it with more than players successfully and with it I mean continuing being successful without any real knock downs. With that much of player movement there should be the possibility that it takes even more than a full season to get the team gelled up if they ever will gel up and also inside this time one or two managers could be gone and one of those being the human player that made a mistake and tried to change too much and was punished for it. 

I would add to that (also see my 2nd paragraph): The manager in question immediately and much more likely put under fire both in the media as well as the board if results don't come (regardless how the side actually performs   ). Bought an entire new first eleven? What a noob,I didn't even do that in Football Manager.

[Tony Wright 747]

54 minutes ago, Spurs08 said:

The Spain/Catalonia stuff is not only too late, but likely too uncertain and too politically toxic. Even if Catalonia did become independent, there's no predicting how it will affect football: their teams could continue in La Liga, form an independent league, merge with the French league or even make a push for a European Super League. All of those potential changes mid-game would also be pretty difficult to program I expect.

It's already possible for it to take a long time (up to ten years) or not happen at all, but the probabilities likely need to be adjusted given real-life developments such as May's support for a transitional period and the recent electoral success of the Labour Party.

They need to take brexit out all together, it is a football management sim not a political management sim, and until we know the outcome IRL it should be removed.

[streety]

Was i the only one who uttered the words Harry Rednapp when Miles pulled up in his car on the video?.

 

I'm hoping to take advantage of the discount, still unsure will need more information other than the video, But it looks 60% likely i might get it anyway..I'm playing the waiting game till Monday..

[Spurs08]

4 hours ago, Tony Wright 747 said:

They need to take brexit out all together, it is a football management sim not a political management sim, and until we know the outcome IRL it should be removed.

Personally I quite like it. It's not turning the game into a political management sim, you don't do any political management. But it does give saves more variety and lead to some interesting challenges. I would like an option though, even if it's stuck in the editor, to either turn it off completely or pre-select an outcome.

[themadsheep2001]

19 hours ago, Tony Wright 747 said:

They need to take brexit out all together, it is a football management sim not a political management sim, and until we know the outcome IRL it should be removed.

Apart from the fact there's no political management....

[Tony Wright 747]

1 hour ago, themadsheep2001 said:

Apart from the fact there's no political management....

I was being scarcastic.  it might be argued that brexit may have an effect on football in the future, so may a European super league, Catalan and Basque independance, Premier League fixtures being played in Asia etc, until it happens I don't think it should be in the game.

[HemHat]

21 hours ago, Tony Wright 747 said:

They need to take brexit out all together, it is a football management sim not a political management sim, and until we know the outcome IRL it should be removed.

 

13 minutes ago, Tony Wright 747 said:

I was being scarcastic.  it might be argued that brexit may have an effect on football in the future, so may a European super league, Catalan and Basque independance, Premier League fixtures being played in Asia etc, until it happens I don't think it should be in the game.

I have been saying this since last year. In my opinion it was only put in as a cynical marketing stunt to cover a lack of new features.

[Wells]

I really hope we won't be forced again for Brexit, just give us an option to disable it when starting new save.

[Spurs08]

5 hours ago, Tony Wright 747 said:

I was being scarcastic.  it might be argued that brexit may have an effect on football in the future, so may a European super league, Catalan and Basque independance, Premier League fixtures being played in Asia etc, until it happens I don't think it should be in the game.

If all that stuff was possible it'd be great to implement it too. But it's probably more complicated and the game also understandably has an English focus given that's where most of the sales are and most people play their saves.

[Tony Wright 747]

1 hour ago, Spurs08 said:

If all that stuff was possible it'd be great to implement it too. But it's probably more complicated and the game also understandably has an English focus given that's where most of the sales are and most people play their saves.

Yes implement it when it happens, not before otherwise the game moves further away from reality into fantasy

[Dagenham_Dave]

1 hour ago, Tony Wright 747 said:

Yes implement it when it happens, not before otherwise the game moves further away from reality into fantasy

The game moves away from reality the first time you hit continue. 

[pukfm]

I will not pre-order and use the "contract extension", unless SI give some more info about the game very soon !!! 

[Svenc]

I'm not sure yet either. Real hoping it's just a fanboy sitting in the dev team implementing a gag or an early build. But according to a source from Football Manager Leaks Burnley seem to be already breaking this new engine bad. Like, real bad. On the guy's save they concede like 150 shots from 7 games. And yet sit atop Liverpool in the tables, as apparently that's not enough for a combined in-game forces of Chelsea, Spurs and Angry Klopp to ship more than 5 goals past them, oh dearie ME!
http://www.footstats.co.uk/index.cfm?task=league_shots

Good thing there's going to be a demo, as the game seems to move away from reality indeed.

Edited October 5, 2017 by Svenc

[russell9]

On 03/10/2017 at 22:03, westy8chimp said:

I was intrigued by the yellow lines connecting players on the tactic screen.

If it is based on dynamics (time spent playing alongside a player... or good interaction between players) then it is good

If it is something we the manager have control of (a role-partnership tactical choice such as when one of you is covering the other should be stopping [rather than having to specify one defender is cover duty the other is stopper]) then it is an excellent addition

Yes I'm hoping for what's new on the tactic screen is somewhat like what you said.
Not interested at the other features at all as they don't add any fun factors to the game only more frustrations.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, pukfm said:

I will not pre-order and use the "contract extension", unless SI give some more info about the game very soon !!! 

This is where I’m at, having a mock 4 minute news piece with “rumours” that are not really expanded on is a good way to tease the new release but if SI want my money before I can read reviews & try the demo they’re going to have to provide more depth on how these new features work & improve the gaming experience.

[Kazza]

5th October and nothing to entice me to buy  before the 9th October  - bad marketing strategy from my view point. It may be that I wait until Steam do a sale or I can get a  key cheaper along the way in a few months. Can live without the instance hit, given we have started the season and FM2017 doing the job for me.

[Neil Brock]

2 hours ago, Svenc said:

I'm not sure yet either. Real hoping it's just a fanboy sitting in the dev team implementing a gag or an early build. But according to a source from Football Manager  Leaks Burnley seem to be already breaking this new engine bad. Like, real bad. On the guy's save they concede like 150 shots from 7 games. And yet sit atop Liverpool in the tables, as apparently that's not enough for a combined in-game forces of Chelsea, Spurs and Angry Klopp to ship more than 5 goals past them, oh dearie ME!

Good thing there's going to be a demo, as the game seems to move away from reality indeed.

Can you please PM a link to this 'insight' so I can take a look, as it sounds absolute rot to me. Thanks. 

[Lynch48]

yes this is getting ridiculous are we going to expect new news features every friday? they should just do it in three days gap between videos and get done with it and focus to polished up the game.

[gunner86]

3 hours ago, Svenc said:

I'm not sure yet either. Real hoping it's just a fanboy sitting in the dev team implementing a gag or an early build. But according to a source from Football Manager  Leaks Burnley seem to be already breaking this new engine bad. Like, real bad. On the guy's save they concede like 150 shots from 7 games. And yet sit atop Liverpool in the tables, as apparently that's not enough for a combined in-game forces of Chelsea, Spurs and Angry Klopp to ship more than 5 goals past them, oh dearie ME!

Good thing there's going to be a demo, as the game seems to move away from reality indeed.

Wait a minute... I'm sure I've seen this somewhere else....    

[Cougar2010]

6 minutes ago, Neil Brock said:

Can you please PM a link to this 'insight' so I can take a look, as it sounds absolute rot to me. Thanks. 

I'm thinking its a whoosh moment and Sven is referring to Burnley IRL.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Kazza said:

5th October and nothing to entice me to buy  before the 9th October  - bad marketing strategy from my view point. It may be that I wait until Steam do a sale or I can get a  key cheaper along the way in a few months. Can live without the instance hit, given we have started the season and FM2017 doing the job for me.

It’s only bad marketing if you never buy the game, as a teaser to pull in some early purchases I reckon they’ve done alright.

[Svenc]

8 hours ago, Neil Brock said:

Can you please PM a link to this 'insight' so I can take a look, as it sounds absolute rot to me. Thanks. 

It's just football, Neil (numbers of the Everton affair on the weekend have not yet been added).   Edited to make this a bit more clear. If you think it's still misleading you can add a few bits to it. Actually, it's been a bit of a Burnley trademark since last season: conceding lots of shots, but comparably lesser quality ones according to various analysts, which allows them to keep scorelines oft in check considering how often they're getting genuinelly "hammered" by attempts. At this early point, this is remarkable even by their standards though. There's no other team in any top division that averages more than 20 shots conceded per match. Let alone for just 5 goals against. Let alone sitting into the top 6 of any tables whilst doing all of it. As you could say, all good, Burnley fans, but most probably enjoy this while it lasts.

Edited October 5, 2017 by Svenc

[Tony Wright 747]

Not always barside.  It's bad marketing if you haven't maximised your sales potential

[HUNT3R]

1 minute ago, Tony Wright 747 said:

Not always barside.  It's bad marketing if you haven't maximised your sales potential

People said the same (bad marketing) last year, and SI had the most pre-orders ever. Whatever they're doing, it's not exactly useless then. Not everyone will like it, but we certainly can't speak for everyone.

[Tony Wright 747]

31 minutes ago, HUNT3R said:

People said the same (bad marketing) last year, and SI had the most pre-orders ever. Whatever they're doing, it's not exactly useless then. Not everyone will like it, but we certainly can't speak for everyone.

As I said if the marketing manager at SI is satisfied that their sales potential has been maximised, then it is not bad marketing

[Guest]

Last year was bad, the end result demonstrated how many FM’era were happy to take a discount offer without knowing what was in the new game & as they’d have probably bought the game anyway it likely meant a net reduction in revenue.

This year’s has been better & knowing the headline features will have enticed some wavering souls to buy early, some to buy when they weren’t & others like myself to continue paying attention until more detail is known when I was more likely to not buy 18 before the headline announcement.

[Tony Wright 747]

Absolutely correct, In my personal opinion the marketing lacks imagination and could be a lot more enticing, but then again I have no idea of the marketing budget, which will obviously affect what is done.

[Bobby_Zamora]

How can you talk about bad marketing, sales potential, and/or provide professional 'tips', when you have absolutely ZERO information about their strategy and almost ZERO metrics about SI and its products?

Please, we are on the outside; live with it.

  

[themadsheep2001]

23 minutes ago, Bobby_Zamora said:

How can you talk about bad marketing, sales potential, and/or provide professional 'tips', when you have absolutely ZERO information about their strategy and almost ZERO metrics about SI and its products?

Please, we are on the outside; live with it.

  

Quite. 

People can talk about whether they liked it or not. But no one can qualitatively talk about its success outside of SI.

[Dagenham_Dave]

56 minutes ago, Bobby_Zamora said:

How can you talk about bad marketing, sales potential, and/or provide professional 'tips', when you have absolutely ZERO information about their strategy and almost ZERO metrics about SI and its products?

Please, we are on the outside; live with it.

  

Well said, sir. 

[ben carter]

Intrigued by what they've shown. I like the look of the squad dynamics. the medical and scouting developments are always welcome but I'll wait to see more details on what they all bring to the game.

I remember seeing the new features for FM17 and honestly, I've probably scrolled through the social media feature in my games once or twice max, it added nothing to the game for me.

Edited October 5, 2017 by ben carter

[Swindon69]

Personally I thought the video was excruciating and the almost complete lack of information is an interesting approach. The medical screenies looked a bit like fluff and the scouting just leaves me rather cold.

Hasn't stopped me pre-ordering though

 

Edited October 5, 2017 by Swindon69

[ChelseaFan]

So, we're expecting a new video today?

[gunner86]

5 minutes ago, ChelseaFan said:

So, we're expecting a new video today?

Who knows. I've not seen anything announced anywhere as of yet.

They basically now have 3 weeks to release 7 feature vids, so the schedule/timing of those is anyone's guess.

Maybe 1 a day for a week?

[ChelseaFan]

14 minutes ago, gunner86 said:

Who knows. I've not seen anything announced anywhere as of yet.

They basically now have 3 weeks to release 7 feature vids, so the schedule/timing of those is anyone's guess.

Maybe 1 a day for a week?

Utter farce as like the hangman anagram bollocks.

Never known a company to be so frigid with their new game features.

[ChelseaSince86]

1 hour ago, ChelseaFan said:

So, we're expecting a new video today?

I thought myself there'd be a new one today.  Cynic in me thinks the match engine stuff (new graphics engine etc) will be one of the last videos, as will tactics, transfers and training (if any)...  first few will be medical screen, scouting packages IMO